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Couch to 5km Assistant

An inline audio assistant to signal the next phase of the couch to 5k running program.

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The idea behind this project is to have a small battery device that can be programmed with the walk/run cycles with transition warning while still allowing one to listen to their favourite running music.

I find running in the morning used to help me sort out ideas and motivate me to get through my running so I could return to the workshop and dive into something *fun*.

What I see is the use of the trinket pro to accept a headphone jack from an mp3 player and the trinket pro and another headphone jack for your headphones. The user can select their week training session and then press go to get themselves on their way to running 5km in 9 weeks!!!

As the store says: GET UP AND RUNNING FAST

Conceptual diagram of how the device needs to work from a user perspective:

1) user plugs in head phones to the head phone jack;

2) optionally, user plugs in mp3 player to the input/mp3 jack;

3) user turns on the device;

4) user selects the week number;

5) user selects the workout number;

6) optionally, the user starts playing music on the mp3 player;

7) the user presses start running.

For those unfamiliar with the program - it works if you stick with it to get you to the 5k hurdle:

Week

Workout 1

Workout 2

Workout 3

1

Brisk five-minute warmup walk. Then alternate 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 minutes.

Brisk five-minute warmup walk. Then alternate 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 minutes.

Brisk five-minute warmup walk. Then alternate 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 minutes.

2

Brisk five-minute warmup walk. Then alternate 90 seconds of jogging and two minutes of walking for a total of 20 minutes.

Brisk five-minute warmup walk. Then alternate 90 seconds of jogging and two minutes of walking for a total of 20 minutes.

Brisk five-minute warmup walk. Then alternate 90 seconds of jogging and two minutes of walking for a total of 20 minutes.

3

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then do two repetitions of the following:

  • Jog 200 metres
    (or 90 seconds)
  • Walk 200 metres
    (or 90 seconds)
  • Jog 400 metres
    (or 3 minutes)
  • Walk 400 metres
    (or three minutes)

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then do two repetitions of the following:

  • Jog 200 metres
    (or 90 seconds)
  • Walk 200 metres
    (or 90 seconds)
  • Jog 400 metres
    (or 3 minutes)
  • Walk 400 metres
    (or three minutes)

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then do two repetitions of the following:

  • Jog 200 metres
    (or 90 seconds)
  • Walk 200 metres
    (or 90 seconds)
  • Jog 400 metres
    (or 3 minutes)
  • Walk 400 metres
    (or three minutes)
4

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then:

  • Jog 400m
    (or 3 minutes)
  • Walk 200m
    (or 90 seconds)
  • Jog 800m
    (or 5 minutes)
  • Walk 400m
    (or 2-1/2 minutes)
  • Jog 400m
    (or 3 minutes)
  • Walk 200m
    (or 90 seconds)
  • Jog 800m
    (or 5 minutes)

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then:

  • Jog 400m
    (or 3 minutes)
  • Walk 200m
    (or 90 seconds)
  • Jog 800m
    (or 5 minutes)
  • Walk 400m
    (or 2-1/2 minutes)
  • Jog 400m
    (or 3 minutes)
  • Walk 200m
    (or 90 seconds)
  • Jog 800m
    (or 5 minutes)

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then:

  • Jog 400m
    (or 3 minutes)
  • Walk 200m
    (or 90 seconds)
  • Jog 800m
    (or 5 minutes)
  • Walk 400m
    (or 2-1/2 minutes)
  • Jog 400m
    (or 3 minutes)
  • Walk 200m
    (or 90 seconds)
  • Jog 800m
    (or 5 minutes)
5

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then:

  • Jog 800m
    (or 5 minutes)
  • Walk 400m
    (or 3 minutes)
  • Jog 800m
    (or 5 minutes)
  • Walk 400m
    (or 3 minutes)
  • Jog 800m
    (or 5 minutes)

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then:

  • Jog 1.2km
    (or 8 minutes)
  • Walk 800m
    (or 5 minutes)
  • Jog 1.2km
    (or 8 minutes)

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then jog 3.2km (or 20 minutes) with no walking.

6

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then:

  • Jog 800m
    (or 5 minutes)
  • Walk 400m
    (or 3 minutes)
  • Jog 1.2km
    (or 8 minutes)
  • Walk 400m
    (or 3 minutes)
  • Jog 800m
    (or 5 minutes)

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then:

  • Jog 1.6km
    (or 10 minutes)
  • Walk 400m or 3 minutes)
  • Jog 1.6km
    (or 10 minutes)

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then jog 3.6km (or 25 minutes) with no walking.
7

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then jog 4km (or 25 minutes).

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then jog 4km (or 25 minutes).

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then jog 4km (or 25 minutes).

8

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then jog 4.5km
(or 28 minutes).

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then jog 4.5km
(or 28 minutes).

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then jog 4.5km
(or 28 minutes).

9

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then jog 5km (or 30 minutes).

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then jog 5km (or 30 minutes).

The final workout! Congratulations! Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then jog 5km (or 30 minutes).

  • 2 × 3.5mm audio jacks input and output
  • 1 × Trinket Pro (acquired) The 'brains' of the operation
  • 1 × custom board for handling the audio jack connections
  • 1 × battery solution (still looking)
  • 1 × enclosure solution (depending on custom board design and battery solution)

View all 6 components

  • Let the soldering lessons commence!!!

    glebite01/11/2015 at 13:30 1 comment

    Soldering station has been acquired - I purchased a reasonably priced and reasonably well-reviewed station (Sigma 60D) and yesterday picked up some solder other than what I used for plumbing. I also seemed to have acquired a few time slices this evening to solder. I'll post old pictures of attempts versus a sample board that I'm doing before returning to the couch to 5k mate device.

  • I haven't given up yet...

    glebite01/04/2015 at 22:05 0 comments

    I like this solution and I think I'm going to purchase a better soldering iron, clean up my crap a bit more and try to package it in something useful.

    A neighbour and I talked about it and I figure that putting a vibration motor on it with possibly some blinking light indicator might be handy for those who don't like to listen to stuff when they run or...

    ...wait for it...

    ...if the the user is deaf.

    Yeah - I think I'd like to work those two in.

  • Submitted...

    glebite01/03/2015 at 05:01 0 comments

    Done - just in time... :)

    Time to crash - it's a long day tomorrow... That was fun - less procrastinating on the next one...

    Still further ahead than my first project submission....

    Thanks for reading and playing along.

  • Well that was a failure...

    glebite01/03/2015 at 04:55 0 comments

    Added update to code.

    I had a craptacular reminder that I can't solder worth beans with the stuff I have. So... Sigh...

    Oh well - got something kind of cobbled together, kind of works, definitely fails.

    Video is 76% uploaded... Grr...

  • Next?

    glebite12/29/2014 at 00:14 0 comments

    I put the Trinket Pro on a dev board and wired up the jacks. I threw in the token resistor ("Bob" is probably developing a nervous twitch*). I pushed the unaltered (love it) code to the device and heard the tell-tale beeps.

    What sucks is that one of my leads broke off of one of the jacks. I'll have to fix that tonight and take some photos...

    For a procrastinator, I'm moving faster than I expected...

    :)

    * "Bob" is a tried-and-true hardware guy that I worked with and he'd get nervous when I'd just throw shit together and apply power. He'd cringe, walk away, turn red and advise me not to do that. So I like to throw a resistor into the equation just for his sake. Well that and it makes the one headphone earbud not sound so loud with the beeping.

  • Updated Audio Test

    glebite12/28/2014 at 18:14 0 comments

    I uploaded the audio test (left/right) to github. I put in an audacity Audacity link (opens in new tab) project so people can reconstruct that simple test or modify to their heart's content. Time to start thinking about the other stuff I need to do...

  • Tone generation and headphones and mp3!

    glebite12/28/2014 at 16:20 0 comments

    So I got off my lazy butt and wired up the tone generator (from the arduino) and an mp3 player and listened to music while my tone generator was running. Next up: trinket pro magic...

    Schematics? Sigh. Yes. Soon.

    Button selector? Soon.

    More code???? Yes - possibly sooner...

  • Whew...

    glebite12/26/2014 at 12:48 0 comments

    Between work and home obligations, things have been a little tight for project work. So this morning I soldered up some headphone jacks that I had, did simple continuity tests on them, wired them into a protoboard, and gave them a whirl.

    They're not the best jacks - there was some left bleed and right bleed (but that could have been the audio test that I was trying - I'll use audacity later to come up with definitive test sounds).

    They worked! Okay - so later today, more testing, then some measurements, some resistors, and a check on the music output with my sound pattern.

  • Updated some code for the sketchbook...

    glebite12/13/2014 at 20:08 0 comments

    I threw some code together and pushed up the initial attempt to github. Going to change from eagle to kicad - updating the repository...

  • Wired up simple tone generation...

    glebite12/10/2014 at 12:08 3 comments

    I hooked up one of the 3.5mm jacks that I had (although I want a smaller profile device) and used the simple toneMelody code for the Arduino. It worked but now I'm thinking that a pot might be advisable for adjusting the volume. I got to thinking about that too and I'm going to have to dust off the research tools to re-think the connecting circuit. Methinks that some resistors are going to be needed and an added pot might affect that in some fashion... ;)

    Bob would be impressed that I'm using resistors. :)

    This page will help me in my quest: http://www.rane.com/note109.html (opens in new tab)

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Discussions

Mike Szczys wrote 01/05/2015 at 21:35 point

Hi glebite.

First off, congratulations with your first video. You have a good project concept here and you should see it through as a way to practice on your soldering (when you said "ehhhh, I'm crappy at soldering" in your video I lol'd). If you are able to get a soldering station, as you mentioned, I think you'll find it a lot easier. I suggest getting some of that soldering wool for cleaning your tip (I find it works better than just a wet sponge) and get some really thin solder as it's easier to control.

Another challenge would be to custom craft the sound for the alarm... you could find a sampled sound and work on code to play it over the audio, or put together one of those libraries that can assemble basic language sounds into speech. Anyway, just a suggestion for your next hack.

  Are you sure? yes | no

glebite wrote 01/06/2015 at 13:01 point

Hi Mike Szczys,

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. I read them aloud to my wife who was really impressed with how wonderfully supportive this whole community is. She's now seeing how much I enjoy this world and like all people, we should be encouraged to learn, explore, and purchase what is needed to expand ones' self. I did some checking, read some reviews and I purchased a decent soldering setup on ebay - should be here in a few days.

All is good.

I will continue posting my progress with this project.

  Are you sure? yes | no

davedarko wrote 01/03/2015 at 14:01 point

Your video is set to private.

  Are you sure? yes | no

glebite wrote 01/03/2015 at 14:04 point

Thanks man - unprivated it...

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davedarko wrote 01/03/2015 at 20:01 point

the video is a bit dark :( anyway, you can embed videos here in project logs and the details by copying in the link and hit enter afterwards.

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davedarko wrote 01/02/2015 at 23:07 point

I was searching for "c25k" to find this project, but couldn't find it that way - gladly there is the contest list ;) Happy hacking and good luck, only 6hours to finalize your project!

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